Homunculus
Story: one shot
Rating: G
Word Count: 1457
Summary: After the death of his assistant, an old alchemist goes about making a very alternative homunculus to replace her, and upsets his peers in the process
Notes: I feel like I'm constantly editing this story, it's been posted and re-posted so many times all over the place, and it's been gone over in class. The main problem is not really knowing where to go with it (and not sure about the alchemist's voice as a narrator). But I'm fond of the characters, in the brief glimpse we get of them.
Anahita is her name. Anahita was her name. A presumptuous name, too pretty for a peasant girl. But I always liked it.
She and I both knew she was ill. We knew a while ago. Consumption, I think it is called. She coughed a lot.
Anahita was not the first female assistant I have had, and, at seventeen years, not the youngest either. I am an Alchemist, but I seek more than the method of creating gold - for gold never brought anything but war and dust.
I have always had a human to assist me, although many of my fellows use homunculi now. I don't know which I prefer; I never seemed to have the time to make a homunculus, when there were so many penniless on the streets desperate for the job.
Anahita was one of those. She was intelligent, which made a nice change from that useless boy I had last time, but not irritatingly so. Quiet too.
I look at the dead girl’s face. She had always been very plain-looking, which I liked. No dashing young boys chasing after her and distracting her from work, no ridiculous proposals of marriage, no sudden pregnancies. She slept in the lab, and in a small bed I built, no less. Well-fed, so long as she worked hard and didn’t complain.
She looks prettier dead than she did alive.
I sigh. The girl was good company. I leave her small body on the cold floor and go in search of a blanket to throw on her.
After giving the girl a small burial, I returned to my lab and my work desk. We had discussed for a long time what I should do when her lungs gave out, and made the necessary preparations. I took the bowl down, and the vial, which had half a pint of Anahita’s blood we had collected in her coughing fits. I poured that into the bowl first.
It was a very dark red and splashed against the bottom of the bowl. I waited until it settled, and smiled to myself.
Clay and ash, I added them in, mandrake root chopped into tiny flakes. Then I filled a small pan with a pint of water that I had asked Anahita to collect from a spring almost a month ago, and put it beside the fire.
I think Dartemis came to visit that day. Or maybe the day after. I remember that, whichever day he came, he saw my ingredients laid out and ready. He approved that I was finally building a homunculus, and I did not tell him that the blood I was using belonged to Anahita.
By the time he came to visit again, I had added half a pint of my own blood. If Dartemis was not so concerned with what is and is not proper, I would have asked him if using two types of blood still worked. Especially if half was from a dead girl. That was why I added my own blood too, trying to balance it out. But Dartemis would have disapproved.
On this visit, I had already started my construction. He told me that it was too tall. A homunculus should reach to a person's knees - halfway up their waist at the most. Mine was the height of a short adult.
“And the wings,” Dartemis said. “Where are the wings?”
I looked at him over my brass-framed glasses, and continued to shape the clay. “They are unnecessary.”
“No,” Dartemis disagreed. “A homunculus always has wings.”
“Homunculi cannot fly.”
“That's not the point. A homunculus always has wings,” he said. I ignored him. “At this rate it will look too…too human.”
I didn't tell him that was the point.
It was a month until Dartemis returned. He came in search of my ale, and had brought our mutual friend Taras. I liked Taras, even though he was as blunt as Dartemis, because he was much more intelligent. Intelligent enough to stay quiet about it. By this time, the homunculus was nearly complete.
“A girl homunculus! What do you want a girl homunculus for?” Dartemis asked in disgust, before delving into my liquor cupboard. Taras and I looked at each other despairingly.
Taras walked over to make closer inspection. “She looks like...well...” He tried to remember. “She looks a lot like that girl who used to live here.”
I nodded to him, sat in my chair in the warmest corner of the room. The homunculus was stood beside the desk, a still statue made of grey clay and mixed blood.
“She looks exactly like the girl who used to live here.” Taras continued, in wonder that I had remembered the features so well.
“Anahita,” I corrected him.
“Don’t say ‘she’,” Dartemis told Taras. He was allowed to do that, because Taras was very much younger than us both, and so it was our duty to correct him all the time. “A homunculus is an 'it', remember that. No matter how well re-created.” He sent me a stern look with that last comment. “No gender and no personality. Remember that.”
“But, you were talking about why anyone would want a girl homunculus,” Taras answered, very confused. I pity the boy; he spends far more time with Dartemis than I would be able to stand. “Do you have a name for her…it?” he asked me.
I leant back in my chair. “I was thinking Karelina.” I direct the comment back at him, and him only, because no matter what I say Dartemis will scoff. “Yes, Karelina.”
Taras smiled and was probably about to say that he liked the name, when Dartemis reappeared, pulling his head from my cupboard and holding a bottle of ale that I had failed to hide properly.
“Too posh,” he said. “Sounds upper-class. You can’t give it such a pretentious name, especially when you’ve modelled it on a plain girl.”
“Well, I rather like it,” Taras said in my defence. He’s a good lad.
“You would,” Dartemis grunted. “Don’t see the point in naming them myself.”
“It's nice to address them properly.”
“But. They. Can. Not. Talk,” Dartemis said, much to our irritation. “Therefore, names are pointless.” He turned to me and poured some ale into a clean glass he had found on my work surface. I hoped it was a glass I had previously held frog’s eyes in, as I prepared myself for his next criticism. “Don’t you think it will be odd to have a clone of that girl wandering around here?” he asked, sounding less rude than I had expected.
“It will be like nothing changed.”
“Except it can't talk.”
“It will talk to me,” I reminded him. As the blood donor, my homunculus and I would be able to contact each other mentally, a useful skill. “And Anahita didn't talk very much anyway.”
Dartemis looked disgruntled, but did not seem able to come up with another reason that would sway me, so he sat down and continued drinking.
I stand before the clay person. The girl. Today is the day that I shall breathe life into her. Into Karelina.
Perhaps the name is too much. I don't have to use it if I don't want to. She does look so much like a girl I once knew.
Dartemis is right. It's too strange to have Anahita before me when I saw her die. I hate it when Dartemis is right.
I make her hair much darker and longer, and tweak her nose so it's shorter, then alter her cheekbones so that they could be sisters and not twins. On second thought, I make her chest smaller, even though it was very little to begin with.
Now she looks better. Different, but she still looks like a peasant. Like a worker. Even Dartemis would not have much to complain about. I'm glad I left out the wings; they would have been in the way.
I clear my throat and step forward. Her nose comes to my chin. I step back a little. Then take a deep breath, and very gently blow the air back out onto her face.
And the grey tone melts away as her skin becomes pale and her hair thick. Deep green emerges in her eyes. This is not an ‘it’, but a ‘she’. A person. Mute, but a person all the same.
The girl’s face does not change, but I feel her join me in my mind. And her name is Karelina.
And I think she is happy to see me.
(Story Index)
Rating: G
Word Count: 1457
Summary: After the death of his assistant, an old alchemist goes about making a very alternative homunculus to replace her, and upsets his peers in the process
Notes: I feel like I'm constantly editing this story, it's been posted and re-posted so many times all over the place, and it's been gone over in class. The main problem is not really knowing where to go with it (and not sure about the alchemist's voice as a narrator). But I'm fond of the characters, in the brief glimpse we get of them.
Anahita is her name. Anahita was her name. A presumptuous name, too pretty for a peasant girl. But I always liked it.
She and I both knew she was ill. We knew a while ago. Consumption, I think it is called. She coughed a lot.
Anahita was not the first female assistant I have had, and, at seventeen years, not the youngest either. I am an Alchemist, but I seek more than the method of creating gold - for gold never brought anything but war and dust.
I have always had a human to assist me, although many of my fellows use homunculi now. I don't know which I prefer; I never seemed to have the time to make a homunculus, when there were so many penniless on the streets desperate for the job.
Anahita was one of those. She was intelligent, which made a nice change from that useless boy I had last time, but not irritatingly so. Quiet too.
I look at the dead girl’s face. She had always been very plain-looking, which I liked. No dashing young boys chasing after her and distracting her from work, no ridiculous proposals of marriage, no sudden pregnancies. She slept in the lab, and in a small bed I built, no less. Well-fed, so long as she worked hard and didn’t complain.
She looks prettier dead than she did alive.
I sigh. The girl was good company. I leave her small body on the cold floor and go in search of a blanket to throw on her.
After giving the girl a small burial, I returned to my lab and my work desk. We had discussed for a long time what I should do when her lungs gave out, and made the necessary preparations. I took the bowl down, and the vial, which had half a pint of Anahita’s blood we had collected in her coughing fits. I poured that into the bowl first.
It was a very dark red and splashed against the bottom of the bowl. I waited until it settled, and smiled to myself.
Clay and ash, I added them in, mandrake root chopped into tiny flakes. Then I filled a small pan with a pint of water that I had asked Anahita to collect from a spring almost a month ago, and put it beside the fire.
I think Dartemis came to visit that day. Or maybe the day after. I remember that, whichever day he came, he saw my ingredients laid out and ready. He approved that I was finally building a homunculus, and I did not tell him that the blood I was using belonged to Anahita.
By the time he came to visit again, I had added half a pint of my own blood. If Dartemis was not so concerned with what is and is not proper, I would have asked him if using two types of blood still worked. Especially if half was from a dead girl. That was why I added my own blood too, trying to balance it out. But Dartemis would have disapproved.
On this visit, I had already started my construction. He told me that it was too tall. A homunculus should reach to a person's knees - halfway up their waist at the most. Mine was the height of a short adult.
“And the wings,” Dartemis said. “Where are the wings?”
I looked at him over my brass-framed glasses, and continued to shape the clay. “They are unnecessary.”
“No,” Dartemis disagreed. “A homunculus always has wings.”
“Homunculi cannot fly.”
“That's not the point. A homunculus always has wings,” he said. I ignored him. “At this rate it will look too…too human.”
I didn't tell him that was the point.
It was a month until Dartemis returned. He came in search of my ale, and had brought our mutual friend Taras. I liked Taras, even though he was as blunt as Dartemis, because he was much more intelligent. Intelligent enough to stay quiet about it. By this time, the homunculus was nearly complete.
“A girl homunculus! What do you want a girl homunculus for?” Dartemis asked in disgust, before delving into my liquor cupboard. Taras and I looked at each other despairingly.
Taras walked over to make closer inspection. “She looks like...well...” He tried to remember. “She looks a lot like that girl who used to live here.”
I nodded to him, sat in my chair in the warmest corner of the room. The homunculus was stood beside the desk, a still statue made of grey clay and mixed blood.
“She looks exactly like the girl who used to live here.” Taras continued, in wonder that I had remembered the features so well.
“Anahita,” I corrected him.
“Don’t say ‘she’,” Dartemis told Taras. He was allowed to do that, because Taras was very much younger than us both, and so it was our duty to correct him all the time. “A homunculus is an 'it', remember that. No matter how well re-created.” He sent me a stern look with that last comment. “No gender and no personality. Remember that.”
“But, you were talking about why anyone would want a girl homunculus,” Taras answered, very confused. I pity the boy; he spends far more time with Dartemis than I would be able to stand. “Do you have a name for her…it?” he asked me.
I leant back in my chair. “I was thinking Karelina.” I direct the comment back at him, and him only, because no matter what I say Dartemis will scoff. “Yes, Karelina.”
Taras smiled and was probably about to say that he liked the name, when Dartemis reappeared, pulling his head from my cupboard and holding a bottle of ale that I had failed to hide properly.
“Too posh,” he said. “Sounds upper-class. You can’t give it such a pretentious name, especially when you’ve modelled it on a plain girl.”
“Well, I rather like it,” Taras said in my defence. He’s a good lad.
“You would,” Dartemis grunted. “Don’t see the point in naming them myself.”
“It's nice to address them properly.”
“But. They. Can. Not. Talk,” Dartemis said, much to our irritation. “Therefore, names are pointless.” He turned to me and poured some ale into a clean glass he had found on my work surface. I hoped it was a glass I had previously held frog’s eyes in, as I prepared myself for his next criticism. “Don’t you think it will be odd to have a clone of that girl wandering around here?” he asked, sounding less rude than I had expected.
“It will be like nothing changed.”
“Except it can't talk.”
“It will talk to me,” I reminded him. As the blood donor, my homunculus and I would be able to contact each other mentally, a useful skill. “And Anahita didn't talk very much anyway.”
Dartemis looked disgruntled, but did not seem able to come up with another reason that would sway me, so he sat down and continued drinking.
I stand before the clay person. The girl. Today is the day that I shall breathe life into her. Into Karelina.
Perhaps the name is too much. I don't have to use it if I don't want to. She does look so much like a girl I once knew.
Dartemis is right. It's too strange to have Anahita before me when I saw her die. I hate it when Dartemis is right.
I make her hair much darker and longer, and tweak her nose so it's shorter, then alter her cheekbones so that they could be sisters and not twins. On second thought, I make her chest smaller, even though it was very little to begin with.
Now she looks better. Different, but she still looks like a peasant. Like a worker. Even Dartemis would not have much to complain about. I'm glad I left out the wings; they would have been in the way.
I clear my throat and step forward. Her nose comes to my chin. I step back a little. Then take a deep breath, and very gently blow the air back out onto her face.
And the grey tone melts away as her skin becomes pale and her hair thick. Deep green emerges in her eyes. This is not an ‘it’, but a ‘she’. A person. Mute, but a person all the same.
The girl’s face does not change, but I feel her join me in my mind. And her name is Karelina.
And I think she is happy to see me.
(Story Index)